A variety of alert notification systems are known for providing weather alerts and other alerts, such as police, fire and emergency alerts to the public. Typically, the alert notification is generated from a public authority (e.g., community, state or national authority) and is targeted to the public located within an indicated geographic area. Historically, alert notifications have been delivered by modalities such as warning sirens and warning tones broadcast over radio and television channels. In recent years, a need has been recognized to extend alert notification systems to wireless telecommunication systems, so as to deliver public safety and other alert notifications to mobile units operated by wireless subscribers present within an indicated geographic area.
Current practices and standards for mobile alert messages are set forth in the following documents, each of which is fully incorporated herein by reference:
“Commercial Mobile Alert Service Architecture and Requirements,” Version 1.0, dated Oct. 12, 2007 (describing general requirements of a United States Commercial Mobile Alert Service);
Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specification TS 22.268 version 11.3.0, dated December 2011 (describing general requirements for a Public Warning System (PWS) in a 3GPP communication network);
3GPP TS 25.419, dated September 2011 (describing parameters of a Service Area Broadcast Protocol (SABP) in a 3GPP communication network);
3GPP TS 48.049, dated March 2012 (describing parameters of a Cell Broadcast Service Protocol (CBSP) in a 3GPP communication network);
ETSI TS 102 900, version 1.2.1, dated January 2012 (describing general requirements of a European Public Warning Service).
Generally, in accordance with the foregoing documents, a Commercial Mobile Service Provider (CMSP) receives an alert message from an alerting entity (e.g., an alert initiator, gateway or aggregator). The CMSP formats the alert in a manner consistent with the appropriate delivery protocol (e.g., SABP, CBSP) and delivers it via one or more cell sites/paging transceivers (e.g., depending on delivery protocol, radio network controllers (RNCs) or base station controllers (BSCs)) to targeted mobile devices. The alert may be delivered to all or a subset of the CMSP's coverage area and/or all or a subset of mobile devices supported by the service provider.
Current practices and standards allow for repetitive rebroadcast of mobile alerts by the RNC/BSCs serving the affected mobile devices so as to increase the likelihood that mobile users will receive and display the alert. In particular, according to current practices and standards, a broadcast commercial mobile alert message (e.g., a WRITE-REPLACE message in the SABP/CBSP protocols), delivered by a CMSP to one or more RNC/BNCs, includes a “number of broadcasts requested” and a “repetition period” parameter so as to instruct the RNC/BNCs as to how many times and how often they are to rebroadcast the message. However, the current practice of repetitive rebroadcast of mobile alerts can create network congestion and may adversely affect performance of the CMSP network resources. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide for reoccurrent mobile alerts at the mobile unit in a manner that reduces or eliminates repetitive rebroadcasts from the RNC/BNCs.